L. Lee Grismer, a field biologist at La Sierra University in Riverside, is gaga over a new species of forest gecko from Southeast Asia that he will present in the scientific journal Zootaxa in three months.
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Grismer will test his hypothesis that the forest lizard is closely related to another new species he discovered last June. He will isolate the forest gecko’s DNA and compare it to that of a similar reptile he tracked down in a cave at the Malaysia-Thailand border.

“We’re still in the age of discovery,” said Grismer, who is credited with detecting more than 80 new species of reptiles and amphibians during the past 35 years.

To us normal, sane scientists (well, as normal and as sane scientists can reasonably be expected to be) this is exciting, but pretty standard news. There is a guy who teaches at some university who is really friggen cool and has discovered over 80 new species of creatures. Thats friggen nuts! And here he found another one. Gonna figure out how the new one is related to all the other ones we know about. Huzzah!

A La Sierra University professor and three university trustees said they were dismissed for trying to resolve a years-long controversy over creationism and evolution that has threatened the religious institution’s accreditation.

Lee Greer, an assistant professor of biology, said the Riverside university refused to renew his three-year contract.
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The dismissals appear to be the latest chapter in a struggle by the Seventh-day Adventist institution to reconcile the church belief that God created the Earth in six days with the scientific consensus supporting the theory of evolution.
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Greer said he initiated discussions that led to a statement proposing that creation be taught in university classrooms as faith, rather than science, and that students be told that it could not be proven with scientific methods.

They fired a biology teacher for making sure the kids will get taught… biology… in biology class…

*blink*

They also fired three of the four trustees who approved of his proposal

Last year, this school was *celebrating* yet another discovery made by one of their biology faculty. An amazing man who used evolution to increase the prestige of La Sierra University.

This year, they are firing ‘not renewing the contract’ of one of their biology faculty for wanting the schools position on evolution clear for the students… And firing ‘dismissing’ three trustees who supported him.

Curiously, three trustees who are female. Who wants to start a betting pool as to whether that fourth trustee, the one who was not fired, is a male? Considering the fundamentalist turn this university has taken regarding evolution, I assume their tolerance of educated, accomplished women has taken a similarly radical turn. Go on, click the hyperlinks in their names. *points up*

Comments

This is apalling! It’s science… How can they “dismiss” great scientists for teaching great science? This scientist obviously know’s what he’s talking about. Seventh-day Adventist or not, this is unfair. They can believe what they want for as long as they want, but it will be the scientists and logisticians who come up and slap them in the face with the truth. Really…

Interviewer:”So why did you quite your last job?”
L. Lee Grismer:”Because I was teaching evolution.”
Interviewer:”…What?”
L. Lee Grismer:”Yes I discovered new gecko species and I wanted to test an hypothesis of mine that it was closely related to the forest lizard. Look they even wrote articles about it in the newspaper.”
Interviewer:”…Consider yourself hired.”

Grismer was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about evolution at work while using this sick, wacko, unauthorized theory to produce publications. The guy has great social/survival skills, he is my kind of accomadationist.

Perhaps he got a reward for turning in those three troublesome females in administration ?

I’m going to have to stop reading your blog if you keep infecting it with reality – depressing as the news is. Let’s take a page out of the religious playbook and just make up shit that makes us (well, more importantly me) feel good. I fully expect that by morning I will have a notification that evolution is now no longer “controversial” in the public schools and is taught everywhere.

Also, abstinence only education has died at the hands of a strange disease I’ll call ‘growing the fuck up’.

I attended La Sierra when I was in college and chose the college because of what it stands for – I wanted to get an SDA education. If i wanted to learn about evolution, then I would have gone to a non-SDA school. If the faculty want to teach evolution as truth, then teach somewhere else. Do they now know that La Sierra U is an SDA school. Look also at who they chose as CHAIR for the Biology department: Grismer – he is leading the Biology Department away from God.